The Cinematheque

“I was split between my tremendous admiration for Robert Bresson and the temptation to make a Hitchcock-like film,” said Louis Malle of his stylish first feature, a gripping Gallic noir adapted from a suspense novel by French writer Noël Calef. Jeanne Moreau, in the role that made her a star, plays Florence, married lover of Julien (Maurice Ronet), an ex-military paratrooper. The tense, twisting plot has the pair plotting the ​“perfect” murder of Florence’s husband, a wealthy industrialist. The film, shot in authentic Paris locations, features gorgeous black-and-white cinematography by Henri Decaë (a Malle and Melville regular) and a legendary improvised jazz score by Miles Davis. Malle’s moody movie won the Prix Louis-Delluc as the year’s best French film and is often cited as one of the seminal works of modern cinema and the French New Wave.